Tunguska
by Saigocage
Summary: Alright so in 1908 there was an inexplicable explosion near Tunguska River in Siberia, Russia. This is Ivan's point of view of what happened there and his thoughts on the situation.


It was terrifying. I was sitting on my chair, reading through the documents that my emperor needed me to read and sign, when suddenly there was this searing pain on my upper back, it felt like I had been shot by... by something worse than the most advanced weapons of that time and if that wasn't enough, there was heat, unbearable heat.

I screamed out an agony, something I rarely do, usually I smile and bare the pain, but this... this was a pain... could it be call pain? It was much worse than that! I tried to stand, to run away, maybe these were enemies trying to take down the nation, but as I moved to stand, I fell to the floor. Quickly this overwhelming burning was spreading across my back; I could feel the blood soaking my coat and scarf.

All went black when someone picked me up and I knew then that I had been captured, but by who?!

It was bright when I opened my eyes again and oddly enough I was lying on my bed stomach down and it was bright! When I felt the pain on my back it had been very early morning and the sun was raising so I must have been out for a good 24 hours if not more. With struggled movements I raised my arm and pushed back the sleeve of my coat to look at the time. To my shocking surprise, it was a quarter passed midnight. Startled I stood up a bit too quickly, because I was flat on my face second later.

On the second try I grabbed the bedpost and sat up to look out the window. Outside the sky was bright, as if it were day, but it was a different looking light, it looked whiter, like artificial lighting, nothing like which the sun would produce. At this weird phenomenon, I yelled for Toris to come to the room.

I told him to tell me everything that happened, what was the weird lighting? Are we under attack? How was I wounded? Are my children hurt?

Though he shook, I couldn't tell if it was from the usual fear of me or from the fear was what people had been calling an apocalyptic event, Toris managed to get me back on the bed, to heal my back, he said. And then he told me what happened.

He says that near Podkamennaya Tunguska River there was an inexplicable explosion. The burned down trees and simply put, destroyed all that lived there. "That's what the reports say", he told me, "But no one has set foot there yet."

So that's what happened. But was it an enemy attack? No one could tell me. Or better yet, no one knew. Without help and without permission from anyone, a laugh, I'm the damn Russian Empire, I don't need permission from anyone, I stood up, back screaming in pain, but I ignored it now, it was nothing like before.

I am going to Tunguska to see for myself what happened to my lush forested land. Toris, nor no one else in the house, moved to stopped me. Ukraine did cry, but I've learned to ignore it, it's what she does, for attention, I speculate.

It took me several days to reach Tunguska River, since I was staying in Saint Petersburg. The reports were true.

I stood at the center of the devastation and as far as my eye could see there was nothing but blackness from the burnt forest. A few tears started to well up in my eyes, the destruction was unheard of and what makes it worse was that no one knew the cause. I drop down to my knees and remove my gloves so I can scoop up the black charred soil with my bare hands. The fellow countrymen watch me, perplexed, I can tell, as I weep for my land. No human can understand the pain that a nation feels while they see such damage done to their land. I tell them to leave me, that I will join them shortly. Obediently they do so.

Alone I walked around in the epicenter. It's dumb founding how the trees here are stripped of their bark, yet they stand, but about a mile away all the trees are disintegrated or knocked down to the ground. Shouldn't these, at the center of the impact, of whatever it was, be fallen too? There was still that odd light in the sky, but it was significantly dimmer now and that night would be the first dark night since the devastation.

I continued to walk as I reminisced about this land and how green and full of life it used to me and as I touch the healing wound on my back, I can only hope that just like me, Tunguska will heal and be green and lush once again. I turned my back to it all and return to my waiting countrymen. I can not bear to see the land no longer and it is then that I decide to not return until it is green again.

Years went by, great wars broke out and my back healed fully, leaving nothing more than a large butterfly shaped burn mark on my back. In that time, with all the struggles, the fighting, the killing, the murders, and the change from an empire to a Communist regime have put all memories and thoughts about the Tunguska events out of my head. That is until Alfred dropped the bombs on Kiku's land.

Photographs are sent to all the dumbstruck nations. No one can believe, no one can fathom the disaster that was caused by America's atomic bombs. My boss hands me the photographs and I gasped. The trees! The trees in the epicenter are just like my trees in Tunguska! Suddenly all the memories and all the reports come rushing back into my head and I have to go there! I have to go to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I have to see this with my own eyes!

Unafraid of the radiation, I catch the first flight to Tokyo and from there I go to Hiroshima, where the biggest of the bombs was dropped. Kiku, currently in a wheel chair agrees to accompany me, though we are technically at war.

We stand now in Hiroshima were the shadow of his children are burned onto the building's walls. He does not cry though, because he finds solace in knowing who did this and vow, secretly, to one day get his revenge. I smile at him, because he can find peace, but I can not. 37 years have gone by and still no one can tell me what happened at Tunguska. My anger toward Alfred has me thinking that maybe he did this to my beautiful land. He possibly dropped a test bomb on Tunguska, but reason tells me that that's not likely. That was 37 years ago! If America had that kind of power, they would have used it long before this.

Snapping out of my thoughts I kneel down before Kiku and I explain to him the similarity of this atomic explosion and the inexplicable explosion in my land. For a moment I see that he wants to blame America as well, but I think that is just the anger trying to speak out. When Kiku does speak, he comes to the same reasonable conclusion that I did, what happened in Tunguska was not done by America. I sigh and I thank him for accompanying me and for granting me passage on to his land. We return to Tokyo were Kiku is taken back to the hospital to recover, I fly back to the Soviet but I go to Tunguska instead of Moscow.

Here I am now, one hundred and one years later and I am stand in the epicenter of the Tunguska explosion. All around my life is blooming. The trees are green and lush. Birds are chirping and animals are living again. I look up at the sky with sorrow in my eyes. Scientist from all fields, from all nations have over a hundred theories of what happened here, many though are leaning to the battle of whether it was an asteroid or a comet.

I really don't care what it was, I just want to know what happened.


End file.
